OTTAWA — Two Liberal MPs, two errant statements about Albertans, two days apart. It all adds up to a mess of trouble for the Liberal Party in the province, and the region, where they must make inroads if they hope to be competitive in the long run — and where they hope to steal a byelection next Monday.

The tendency is to treat the two situations as the same: Liberal Alberta-hatred, if you’re a Conservative; Conservative gotcha politics, if you’re a Liberal. But in fact the two are quite distinct.

The statements of David McGuinty, that Tory MPs from Alberta were too narrowly devoted to the interests of the oil industry — “shilling” was the word he used — to the detriment of the national interest, more nearly fit the “gotcha” mould. It is perfectly defensible for one MP to challenge another to take a broader view of an issue than just that of his own particular region or industry. I only wish more MPs did the same.

It’s also perfectly defensible for MPs to defend their region or industry, if they think it is being treated unjustly — if it is not the broader interest to which they are being asked to yield, but some narrower agenda. As bad as the National Energy Program was for Alberta, the truer indictment of it is that it was bad for the country. It wasn’t in the national interest to deprive Alberta of the world price of oil: It was strictly in the interest of central Canadian manufacturers.

No doubt there are people today who take a similarly blinkered view of the oil industry: the “Dutch disease” theorists come to mind. There is nothing wrong in principle with asserting that a boom in the resource sector often comes at the cost of a decline in manufacturing (though it may be wrong in fact). What’s wrong is the assumption that this is necessarily to be deplored, as if the interests of manufacturing should naturally take precedence over those of resources.

But if it is wrong to equate the national interest with the interests of manufacturing, it is equally wrong to equate it with those of the oilpatch. The offensiveness or otherwise of McGuinty’s remarks, therefore, depends on the context — on the specific terms of his dispute with the Alberta MPs, not the mere fact that McGuinty accused them of parochialism. If he was out of line, it should be easily demonstrated. The MPs’ practised displays of outrage reek more of opportunism than offence.

Justin Trudeau’s statements, on the other hand, are a different matter. True, it was in 2010, not this week, that he complained to an interviewer in Quebec that “it’s Albertans who control our community and social-democratic agenda — it doesn’t work,” adding that “I’m a Liberal, so of course I think” the country is better governed by Quebecers than Albertans. But it does not alter the fact that he said these things, and presumably believed them.

To be sure, there is a context here, too: Trudeau was making these remarks by way of defending Quebec’s participation in Canada, against Quebec nationalists who insist it must withdraw into itself to defend the French language and culture. This is wholly honourable, even praiseworthy.

But context only partly saves him. If he was not deliberately exploiting divisions for partisan gain — it was Canada he was defending, not the Liberal Party — but rather was caught in an unguarded moment, it was all the more revealing for that: These were his real thoughts, not a card he was playing.

If it suggests he was not thinking of national leadership at the time (for if he had he could hardly have imagined this would not cause trouble for him elsewhere) it also suggests a sincere belief that Albertans are a wholly alien people, who cannot be permitted to “control our community” — who are, indeed, ill-equipped to govern the country. His defence, a day after the controversy broke, that he had mistaken Stephen Harper’s views for those of Albertans, does little to erase this impression.

This is not the first time, after all, that Trudeau has unburdened himself on this topic. In another infamous interview for the Quebec media, in which he intimated that if he concluded Stephen Harper’s values were those of Canada, he might one day be a separatist, too, he conveyed the same sense of Quebec’s approach to government being, if not altogether different, then superior, more progressive than those of les autres — as if Quebec’s role was to civilize the rest of Canada. “It’s not necessarily that Canadians don’t have the same values as us Quebecers,” he said then. “It’s that there’s a way of seeing social responsibility, openness toward others, a cultural pride here in Quebec that’s necessary for Canada.”

Look: There are differences in values, or at least in priorities, between different regions. Many people in Quebec would share Trudeau’s view of the province’s mission civilisatrice, as indeed do its admirers in the rest of Canada. It’s just hard to square that with a national leadership role — as a practical matter if nothing else.

Whatever the accuracy or otherwise of Trudeau’s views, people in Alberta would be entitled to conclude from them that he did not much care for their province, and to cast their votes accordingly. And people in other parts of the country would be equally entitled to wonder whether this person had the breadth of vision, or the judgment, to be a force for unity, rather than division — to govern for the whole country, rather than a part of it.

Even if you thought these things, after all, why would you say them? It is no defence, for those in positions of political leadership, that what they say is true. It was probably true, as a sociological fact, that “the ethnic vote” played a crucial role in defeating the 1995 referendum in Quebec. But sociological facts, in the mouth of a premier, take on rather a darker colouring. As always, context is everything.

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